


The Force: Gone to Maine

by leoba



Series: Scary Stories [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, F/M, Finn is a vampire, Hux is the sheriff, Mild Gore, Swearing, The Preacher AU, is it cannibalism if you're a vampire?, racism mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-07-29 23:50:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16274912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoba/pseuds/leoba
Summary: A Reylo Preacher AU: Ben and Rey meet up after long time apart.





	The Force: Gone to Maine

**Author's Note:**

> An Angels & Demons AU for Reylo Monster Week, Day Three. This is blatantly ripped off from The Preacher comic book series (there's a show, too, but I've never watched it)
> 
> Check out the endnotes for more half-assed ideas I have about this AU.
> 
> Thanks to LoveThemFiercely, who is my beta for all my Reylo Monster Week stories.

 

  


The sun was just going down. I was still lying on my back in the cab of the pickup, but I’d been awake for a bit. Staring at the ceiling, contemplating my poor life choices, trying to ignore my growling stomach and wondering when Finn was going to wake up so I could get some damn food, when I felt the earth shake.

I don't know a damn thing about the geography of the Northeastern United States - are earthquakes unusual in Maine? - but the distant **boom** that chased the shaking convinced me it wasn't an earthquake after all. The smoke I could see rising from behind the nearby mountaintop guaranteed it was something else entirely.

I felt a sudden _pull_ , like there was a string around my heart and one around my stomach and somebody tugging them hard, they’d be pulled right out of my body if I didn’t follow along. So I sat up, scooted myself behind the steering wheel, and took off. Inoffensive 90s rock blasted when I turned on the ignition, but I shut that shit right down and drove in silence. Finn has terrible taste in music. He's also several inches shorter than me, which meant my knees hit the underside of the dashboard every time I went for a pedal, but I didn't want to take the time to adjust the seat.

Within a minute I could hear Finn shouting from the bed of the pickup, where he was still lying under that damn tarp. He wasn't saying anything important so I slid the window between us shut and ignored him as I did my best to follow the little county roads over the mountain, following that enigmatic pull, which was bringing me closer and closer to where the smoke was rising into the sky.

When I finally got there it was twilight and Finn was sitting full up, uncovered, still swearing and yelling at me through the closed window. I pulled up to what had recently been some kind of building; a large brass cross, mangled but recognizable, lay on its side in the middle of the road. A church, then. One look at the wreckage, which covered the cars in the parking lot, the roadway, and surrounding fields, suggested that it had been full of people when whatever happened, happened.

Weren't people there any more, just bits of them. Looked like a bomb had gone off, the church was a hollow shell, burned out. From the perspective of the truck, up a slight hill from where the church’d stood, looked like there was a big hole in the middle of the ruins. Basement, maybe? There was no visible fire but still that smoke.

Maybe it wasn't smoke. Sure didn't smell like regular smoke to me. Was too… I don’t know. Rotten. Smelled rotten. Sweet and rotten.

And still that pull. Right here.

As I sat there trying to figure out what the hell was happening and why I’d been drawn to this place, I saw Finn in the rearview mirror hop out of the bed and walk into the long grass on the side of the road to take a piss.

Classy.

I averted my eyes quickly and brought my attention back to the destroyed building, and three things happened at once.

First, I became aware of the sound of distant sirens. There were no houses out here that I could see, the closest towns must be miles away, no surprise it was taking the fuzz a while to get here. Why put a fucking church out in the middle of nowhere? Fucking Maine.

Second, Finn, having relieved himself, sauntered around the side of the truck, stepped right into a pile of debris illuminated by the headlights, picked up what appeared to be a small hand, and gnawed on it before tossing it back down.

“No good when it's not fresh, but doesn't hurt to try,” he yelled back at me, grinning, before spitting on the ground.

My stomach turned. He knows I hate it when he does shit like that, but he doesn't give a fuck. He thinks it’s funny. I didn't know what he was when I met up with him, seven days before in Boston. I’d just made an assassination attempt on my former boss - failed, I found out later - and Finn was there when I needed him, random dude with a friendly smile and a pickup truck, willing to drive me out of town in the middle of the night and not ask too many questions. Should have known it was too good to be true. Don't get me wrong, we get along fine, but he sleeps all day, then at night he kills people and drinks their blood. It's just a little bit disconcerting.

Anyway, the third thing. The third thing that happened, the one that I'm avoiding telling you, preferring instead to tell you about Finn Storm _taking a fucking piss and eating people_ , is that a person climbed out from that giant hole in the middle of that church. And not just any person, no sir. Even in the dimming twilight and the shadows thrown by the headlights I woulda recognized that person anywhere.

Rey Fucking Niima from South Fucking London is who that was.

I hadn’t seen her in five years. I hadn’t stopped thinking about her for five years. Five years wondering where the hell she’d been, why the hell she’d left me. I thought we were happy, I did. I loved her more than I loved anything or anyone, ever, and she _knew_ it and one day she just up and walked out, didn’t say a word, never got in touch with me again.

And there she was, climbing out of the ruins, the only living person after a fucking _church explosion_ and her hair’s a mess and there’s stains on her face and she’s still the most beautiful goddamn thing I’ve ever seen in my fucking life. And I felt her. I _felt_ her.

It was her.

At this point I climbed out of the truck. Finn hadn’t seen her - he was still poking around for a snack, I guess - so I had a moment a least to make my way towards her. Rey hadn’t noticed me yet. She seemed a bit… distracted. Disoriented. She certainly had a right.

I guess the sirens were getting louder. They must have been, although I will admit I wasn’t really paying attention.

She’d climbed out and walked a bit away from the ruined walls, took a moment to brush dust off her clothes - all black. That was different; she used to be a rainbow girl. She finally saw me the same time Finn saw her. He ran over and started to say something, _what the fuck_ or some shit, who knows, but she just looked at me.

Just at me.

“Hello, Ben,” she said, “How are you?” Looking right in my face, all calm like it was Tuesday and her next question would be if I preferred Chinese or Mexican delivery for dinner. She still had that accent, that voice that makes me weak in the knees.

I wanted to yell. I wanted to be angry, to ask her where she’d been, why she left, something, _anything_ , but instead I melted a little inside and said, “Hey, Rey.” My voice sounded soft, even to me. I saw Finn make a face out of the corner of my eye. Fuck him anyway.

I felt like I did the first time I met her, when she was nineteen and I was thirty and I’d never given a second look to _anybody_ , figured I’d spend my life alone and then… there she was. New hire at my dad’s garage, fresh out of High School, she smiled at me and said “Hello, Ben,” and I was gone. I was hers, forever and always, whether she wanted me or not.

She did want me, at least for a while. It was good while it lasted.

I could still feel her, and I needed to be closer, so I took a few more steps and she flinched at the same time I noticed the bit of white at the throat of her shirt.

Fucking priest’s collar. Rey had become a goddamn preacher.

I held out my arms and she took a step back and put her hands up as though warding me off. “Please don’t touch me, Ben,” she warned, an edge entering her voice. “There’s something wrong with me. I don’t know if it’s safe to touch me.”

Finn laughed at this, hard, and held up his arms, turned right around. “ _Do you fucking think so?_ ” he shouted, and she turned her face to him, as though only just noticing him. He stared right back at her as the flashing lights from the approaching police cars illuminated his face, reflecting purple against his dark skin. He had to yell even louder to compete with the wailing sirens. “Church explodes, you climb out of the smoking rubble unhurt, and you think maybe you’re _not_ _safe to be around_? Jesus Fucking Christ, lady, you’re a piece of work.”

She flashed, then. I’m not sure how to explain it, but she was Rey Niima, and then, just for a second, she was something else too. There were wings, and eyes, and an emotion, a memory. Then she was just Rey again.

Finn saw it too. He was spooked, and backed down. Rey was aware. She looked… satisfied. Like she used to when she’d tried some new cuisine and found that it was tasty, or the first time she’d had an orgasm during anal.

It was about this time that we really noticed the cops. They had come from the same direction we had, and had pulled behind the truck and around into the grass on the other side, where Finn had taken his piss earlier. They weren’t too close, well distant from the debris, both organic and non, that coated the cars in the parking lot and littered the roadway. There were maybe ten cars - probably every cop car from twenty miles around Bum Fuck County, Maine - and as we watched a couple of ambulances pulled in behind them. They’d trained lights and their guns on us, and some asshole had got ahold of a bullhorn.

It was hard to see, them standing behind the lights and all, but whoever it was talking through that horn was tall and skinny, and stood like he had a stick up his ass all the way to the top of his head. His voice was a sneer. I hadn’t even met him and I already hated him.

“Alright, folks,” he drawled, a very faint Down East accent present, true local this one. “We are aware there has been an event, and we need you to clear out so we can come in and take care of the situation.”

Rey, Finn and I exchanged a look. We held our hands up slowly and made to surrender ourselves, and I guess that’s when this guy got a good look at us.

A good look at Finn, anyway.

Now, the thing you need to remember about the Northeast is that it's full of fucking racists. Not everyone, for sure, but enough to make it uncomfortable for everyone else, especially friendly black vampires who are just trying to mind their own damn business when their handlers drive them into uncertain situations.

So here's what happened next, far as I can tell. The sheriff - that was the asshole with the bullhorn - started to say something rude. Finn told me what it was later, many times, but at the time I wasn't listening because I was busy feeling Rey. She’d known what the sheriff was going to say before he said it and it made her mad. It made the thing inside her -The Force - mad too. I could feel it; I’m used to it, now, but back then it was strange and terrifying and almost completely overwhelming. So the sheriff said this rude thing aimed at Finn, something about gangs and good people and infestations, and Rey stepped in front of us, raised up her right hand and _changed_.

She was still Rey, but she was something else too, like she’d lifted up the top of her box and gave us a peek of something inside, something that had always been there but which she was just figuring out herself. As before there were wings and eyes, joined now by a tentacle, a fucking _tentacle_ , not that her body changed but like a flicker, like a movie playing over top of her or something. And there was _emotion_ with it, a heady combination of loss and power. Again, I’m used to it now but that first time… I thought I might pass out.

Also gave me a hardon the size of my arm, and ain’t _that_ a thing. But anyway.

Then there was the voice. There was her voice, I could hear it, but then there was another voice, and that voice was _everywhere_ , coming from the sky and the grass and from deep in the ground. An _old_ voice. I could say it was deep, and loud, and you’d think you understand but you wouldn’t. It was like the voice of God. It _wasn’t_ the voice of God, but that’s what it sounded like.

That’s what she said. And dammit all if that’s not exactly what they did. Every one of them, to a man, set down their guns and laid down on the ground. I followed Rey back to the pickup, but Finn took a detour to the sheriff. He started to kneel down next to him, and I could see what was coming and yelled at him to get a move on. He was pissed at me but did as I asked; instead of making the sheriff his meal he picked up the man’s gun, stuck it in the back of the waistband of his jeans, and kicked the sheriff square in the face. I heard a solid _crunch_ as his heavy workboot met bone, but the skinny man on the ground didn’t make a sound. Then Finn made his own way back to the truck. We all got in the cab and Finn drove us away from there, simple as that. I cringed as he made his way around the detritus in the road, not carefully enough in my opinion, but before long the church and cops were far enough behind us that we were able to breathe again. Breathe, and argue.

Finn was first to speak, because of course he was. “What the _fuck_ was that?” His knuckles were white on the steering wheel and he hadn’t moved to turn the radio back on so I knew he was seriously pissed off. No, I’ll be charitable. He was really fucking scared.

Rey was sitting in the passenger seat, looking at her hands with a contemplative expression on her face. She glanced up and looked past me, giving him a half smile. “I’m just figuring it out; it’s whatever happened inside the church.”

While Finn considered this, I said the first dumbass thing that came into my head, which was, “Sorry about your, uh, congregation.”

Rey laughed at that, she fucking _laughed_ , a nice bitter one. “Oh, they were all terrible people. Wednesday evening service is usually me and six old ladies. The only reason the church was full tonight was because I had an, uh, _altercation_ with some of them yesterday at the grocery store. They weren’t here to praise God, they were here for the drama. They wanted to see me fall. The joke is on them, because that’s not what happened, is it.”

Finn nodded, clearly very unhappy. “And what, exactly, happened inside the church? It wasn’t actually a bomb, was it.”

She shook her head and returned to contemplating her hands. “No, it was not. As I say, I’m just figuring it out, but … something came to me, just as I was standing up to give my sermon, and it’s inside me now. It wants me to call it The Force. It came here from Heaven but that’s not where it’s from; it’s not an angel, nor is it a demon, but as you saw that’s how it manifests. It's something else; I don’t really understand. It needs me for something; it wants to go home. And apparently I can use it to make people do things.”

I looked at her hands, too. They looked good, softer than they used to, like she no longer worked with them all day. She’d had a manicure recently. Both thoughts made my heart constrict.

“You use it, or it uses you?” That was my question.

She exhaled, hard, out her nose, and made her hands into fists. “I’m not sure what the difference is, Ben. Another thing I need to figure out.”

“And it talks to you?”

She sighed. “It… communicates with me. I know what it knows, I know what it wants.” Apparently that was all she had to say about that.

Finn spoke up again. “So this thing - The Force - coming to you. That’s what made the church explode?”

She nodded. “I guess so. I don’t remember it happening. I only know because The Force remembers.”

“And you two, Ben and… Rey, you called her? You know each other?”

Rey and I both nodded, but neither of us said anything.

“Fuck,” Finn said.

We drove on for several minutes in silence. Finn finally turned off the county road and onto a state highway. He’d be looking for a diner, to get me some food. He gets food his own way, but he’s considerate about my needs, I’ll give him that.

I realized I was still watching Rey watch her hands. I wanted to touch them. And not just because they looked soft and sweet, or because they were hers and I wanted to touch her. No; The Force wanted me to touch her, was in my head somehow, telling me to touch her.

So I did. I reached out my hand and pressed my palm against hers, and then I was falling into darkness.

I knew things, things I had no right to know. I remembered Rey as a child, so lonely but so afraid to leave. I remembered meeting me, and every time we’d had sex, and every time she’d thought about having sex with me. I remembered leaving. I remembered angels and demons and pain, being ripped from my home and forced into a cage I don't understand. And I remembered a girl with Rey’s face, squinting into the desert sun, and a man who looks like me, face rent by a jagged scar, and I remembered the joy I felt when they were together, balanced. And I knew that they were us and we are them and if The Force were ever going to get back home it was up to us to make it happen.

There was more, so much more, memories and knowledge of Rey and of The Force and those other versions of _us_ , but eventually I was aware of the truck stopping and heard Finn’s voice cutting through the haze.

“Chow Time, kids,” he said, too-loudly and fake-cheery. “Time to let go and come inside before I change my mind.”

Indeed, I had somehow moved from touching her palm to gripping her hand in mine. I looked at her and she was staring at me, tears running freely down her face.

 _I am so afraid_ , I thought to myself.

Her voice replied in my head, clear as day: _Don't be afraid, I feel it too. We’ll be alright, together_.

After everything else that had happened in the past week it was just one more thing. We followed Finn across the parking lot and into the diner, still hand in hand. After five years, finally, she didn't want to let me go.

**Author's Note:**

> In the original comic book series, an angel and a demon had a child, called Genesis, and that's what infects Jessie (the Preacher). What I wanted to do here is associate The Force with that supernatural character. So the idea is that the Angels in Heaven, with great hubris, have taken The Force from the Star Wars Universe and trapped it in the form of a monstrous Angel. The Force wants to get the hell home, like you would, and so it sets off to find Rey and Ben in this universe, because they can help. (How? I haven't figured that part out yet.) This is the very beginning of what could be a much larger story. I hope it works well enough on its own, at least a little thing for Monster Week.
> 
> I made Rey the Jessie character and Ben the Tulip character just because I enjoy switching genders for AUs, but I think it works pretty well!
> 
> Why Maine? I wanted them to start in Boston, and I have a soft spot for the state. My grandfather was from Brewer and he had a fantastic Down East accent up until the day he died despite living his entire adult life in Tennessee. I will admit that Stephen King may also have played a role.
> 
> * * *
> 
> This is my third submission to Reylo Monster Week. As a challenge I set to myself, I'm writing these all as kind of Lovecrafitan/Weird/Cosmic Horror things, which means:
> 
> *Lots of character death  
> *Lots of unpleasant monsters  
> *First-person narration aka unreliable narrator
> 
> All of my submissions are based on existing stories, and references to these will be in the tags.
> 
> I hope you enjoy, please leave kudos or a comment if you do.
> 
> I'm leofgyth over on tumblr, please come say hi!


End file.
